


Whoops part three

by Hal_is_absolutely_not_ladylike



Series: Whoops [3]
Category: Leverage, The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Fluff, Multi, a little but of Angst if im being honnest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-25
Updated: 2020-08-25
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:21:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26098552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hal_is_absolutely_not_ladylike/pseuds/Hal_is_absolutely_not_ladylike
Summary: A peak into Parkers notes and feelings.
Relationships: Alec Hardison/Parker/Eliot Spencer, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Series: Whoops [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1893439
Comments: 6
Kudos: 113





	Whoops part three

Parker knew she wasn’t normal, and not just because of the whole undead thing. She preferred it that way, being normal… being Alice was nice for a while but Parker much preferred being Parker. Parker also knew that normal people don’t keep extensive notes about the people in their lives, but well its easier for her to not so much get to know someone as to make a close study of them to better understand them. She had taken to storing her notebooks on Alec and Eliot with her notebooks on Nate and most of the ones on Sophie (she kept the ones with good grifting advice closer) in the industrial building she had not far from the brewpub, there were getting to be too many of them to stash about the place, you can only keep so many things in the air vents before it starts to get awkward crawling through them. So when they died and un-died and Eliot explains about the others she started a notebook for them. Parker knew that eventually they would all need their own notebooks but for now they can start in one as a collective “Eliot’s other family.” (She crossed that out and wrote “Eliot’s immortal friends” something about the idea of Eliot having another family, like Archie did, hurt in a way Parker knew Eliot didn’t mean to hurt them.) 

She put her drawings of them in the front after the dinner, Eliot insisted she keep them out to show Joe (who had tried to talk to her about art and capturing a person essence before she had told him it was just something she did). 

She made other notes after the dinner as well, to not tell Eliot or Joe or Nicky that Sophie had actually given her the second David last year for Christmas. (She had wrapped him in tinsel, put the tiniest little Santa hat on his head, and strung The Star of Florence around his neck, Sophie told her she had stolen it a while ago and that she thought it was apt that The Star for Florence should stay with the Florentine man [Parker didn’t tell Sophie that she had been planning to steal the star when Sophie had gotten it out from under]). She also wrote “Don’t tell Joe about the Goya or the Sargent… do tell Nicky about the Goya.” And then much smaller “tell Andy and Booker about the Dali.” Parker hoped Joe and Nicky wouldn’t be mad that she hard artworks of them, but at least they were hers and not out there for people to see. There were also notes about Nicky’s feelings about art and the modern concept of a museum, which they had talked at length about after dinner (not that she would tell Hardison that she liked how scrunched up he got no knowing).

Parker would have to talk to Hardison about a few paintings that they should probably make harder to find on the internet, or maybe she could just take a long weekend and have a “girls trip” with Sophie and add them to her collection. 

She also made a note to find out if Eliot’s friends were grinches like he was about Christmas, she had a hunch they were.

She made a note that Joe and Nicky could share notebooks in the future, she got the feeling they would prefer that, to be a unit, also it made them easier to understand.

Parker though for a long time about Booker and what to write about him, she would get the minutia of how many times he blinked per minute, and exactly how he took his coffee or tea in a later notebook but for the first one that was more of a general sketch of the group she just wrote “Sad like Nate. Drinks like Nate too.”

For Andy she wrote “Convince Eliot to teach me how to fight with an axe.” And then “Get an axe like Andy has.” She also wrote “research decomposition of 17th c iron in salt water.”

And so Parker made a dedicated study of Eliot’s immortal friends whenever they came around.

* * *

When Andy said she wouldn’t help them with a Job that they would also need Tara on because “I don’t do repeats” and eventually huffs out that how she knew Tara was “Personal” and everyone else had said Oh in a meaningful way Parker makes a note of it. Privately she thinks the personal connection must have been sex, it always makes people so awkward, but she only writes things she knows in the notebooks so that stays out.

* * *

When Booker agrees to help on a Job that they will need two hitters for (El and Alec have a fight about it which ends when El says “Damn it Hardison I know you can take a punch but I don’t want to watch you die again” Parker doesn’t need to make a note of that she knows Eliot never wants them to get hurt) and lets himself get beaten half to death when he clearly could have taken out the guards much faster if he had even tried Parker makes a note of it.

* * *

The time that they meet Joe and Nicky in Paris for dinner on their way back from a Job in Romania and they run in to Archie leads to copious notes. Parker had to pull out one of her Archie note books because when she introduced Joe and Nicky as her friends, he looks so happy for her. But Parker didn’t get to enjoy it for very long because she had then introduced Archie, Joe and Nicky had both looked very suspiciously at him and then looked at Eliot and then pulled them aside and the Joe had quietly said

“that is not Archie Leach, we knew Archie Leach, he is dead, we went to the funeral”

“And you’re not Joe Anderson. Of course he’s not Cary, no one thinks that, he just liked the name probably didn’t think any one would know it but him.” Eliot had growled back.

“Is it not awkward for you?” Nicky looked… concerned Parker though “Having Archie Leach in your past and in your present.”

“No, I called him Cary like everyone else did in the 40’s it was you two who knew him earlier-” Whatever else Eliot was going to say was lost when Hardison put things together.

“Wait a minute you’re talking about Cary Grant!” Hardison was trying to whisper shout it was cute “Did you know Cary Grant!”

“Intimately, but not as well as Eliot he lived with him for a year after the war.” Joe said casually, Joe had a manner of speaking that made everything seam casual Parker wanted him to teach her how to do that.

“You slept with Cary Grant!” Hardison’s whisper shouting was getting kinda loud, and Archie was only really standing a few steps away to be polite at that point.

“You knew you weren’t the first guy I slept with-”

“Yeah but I didn’t think I had to follow Cary Grant!”

“Eahhh, don’t worry to much about it” Nicky supplied.

Before the argument could continue further Archie walked back up and spoke.

“As important as this argument surely is” Arche did not look impressed “It is getting late and if you don’t mind, I would like to take all of you to dinner, my treat.” Archie smiled at them the smile he had tried to teach her when he was attempting to teach her to grift, she had many sketches of it but still couldn’t get it quite right on her own face.

They had had a very pleasant dinner, and Archie had actually paid with is own card (Parker may have lifted the bill fold to check briefly after Archie had handed it off to the waiter) which was another reason to pull out her Archie notebooks. When they had all parted ways and the evening had come to an end (after Eliot had spent quite a while in bed convincing Alec past experience was just that past and it was the present that counted) Parker made a note in the Joe and Nicky notebook to look up who Cary Grant was. 

* * *

There are notes about Nicky’s grifting, notes about the time Andy filled in for Eliot (he had been planning that meal for a week, he had gotten a whole lamb from the butcher that was killed that morning he was not, he could not, just going drop everything because everything had lined up with the mark and Andy was in town and didn’t have anything to do so she filled in while Eliot stayed home and cooked). There were notes about the way Joe looked at Nicky in the morning, and the way Booker always knew the end of whatever book Eliot was reading and if he was in a particular mood would tell him just to make him shout. There were notes about how Nicky and Joe’s cooking was different from Eliot’s (it still made her feel things just in a different way). There ever even notes about how often they blinked (Andy far less than normal, Booker seemed to always be blinking, Nicky just far enough from normal that if you stared for to long and you noticed it could be off putting [Parker liked that], and Joe exactly average). There are notes about they way the move through the world, and they way they fight, there are notes about Baklava (it is capital I Important to Andy). There are notes about the importance of the island of Malta, and notes about Andy’s feelings about Amazons, there are notes about how Booker hates the cold, there are notes about how they act independently and when collected as a group. There are notes about Bookers alcohol preferences, and his literature preferences. There are notes about Nicky’s lack of literature preferences (any book you have is good really, I just like a nice story), and his hatred of football (soccer). There are enough notes that eventually Parker starts to maybe understand them a little, or at least she thought she did before things changed. 

* * *

When things changed, when Booker had to leave for a while, Parker got that people were hurt but she was still mad. She had the notebooks she could point to pages and pages of examples of moments that if Alec or Eliot had looked at them, they would have said they were signs of love, she also has that first note from the first dinner. Family doesn’t leave family, especially not to punish that family member who only did something stupid because they were in pain. 

Parker was Mad at Joe and Nicky when they came around to introduce Nile. So instead of meeting Nile with El and Alec Parker stayed in the air vents and took notes.

She noted that Nile moved with confidence and grace. That Nile seamed happy to meet new people, like it wasn’t hard work. That Nile was glad when Hardison got a joke she made that no one else seemed to, Parker thought it might have been a meme reference or maybe a Vine she wasn’t sure and so didn’t note that. That Nile wasn’t afraid to tell Hardison that his ideas for brewing sounded bad, and that that had instantly endeared her to Eliot. Nile fit in easily. Nile would be a pretty good hitter if she worked with Eliot for a while, and Hardison could probably get her hacking if she wanted to learn. Parker noted the way Nile had touched the little cross at hear throat when they sat down to eat, and watched Hardison clock it and give her a nod acknowledgement, and noted the way Nile had smiled when she had taken her first bite of Eliot’s cooking. 

Later when Nile meets her out in the brewpub proper, Parker had wanted to actually met her so she could stop dreaming but hadn’t wanted to see Joe or Nicky, and Nile agrees with her that leaving Booker alone was the wrong call Parker is elated.

After their guest leave for the night Hardison tells her that Nicky and Joe had asked about her, that when he and El had greeted them outside they had looked for her and been a little disappointed not to see her. For her notes he says. She tells him they will have to be patient with her like he was when he wanted pretzels. 

* * *

Parker did not stop seeing or contacting Booker, he was family and she had the notes to prove it.

**Author's Note:**

> (Did you know that Cary Grant's original name was Archibald Leach because found that out recently and it made me side eye the writers of leverage hard as hell.) Am I implying that Joe and Nicky slept with Cary Grant? HEAVILY. Am I implying that Eliot was, at a later point, in a serious enough relationship that they lived together for a year? did you even read it? Is this the last of these? Maybe, but I didn't even intend to write the first one so who knows!
> 
> (If you were confused The Star of Florence is a made up diamond. I imagine it as a white diamond about the size of a large egg square cut set on the diagonal and surrounded by pearls thing something Queen Elizabeth the first would wear.)
> 
> (Also I tried something new with the dashes to kind of separate the scenes I don't know if its quite what I wanted it to be but it makes this one less of just a wall of text which it needed.)


End file.
